Ousted Purdue coach Danny Hope compiled a 22-27 record in four seasons. Ticket sales were down and general apathy was commonplace around Boilermaker football.

That Purdue clinched a bowl game berth with wins over lowly Iowa, Illinois and Indiana wasn’t enough to save Hope’s job, and he was upset about it, he told WLFI-TV in West Lafayette, Ind. Hope implied that Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke did not take enough responsibility for poor ticket sales.

“It came down to ticket sales,” Hope said on the show. “But ticket sales have been dropping here since 2000. It’s not all about what happens just behind the whistle. You have to have some accountability behind the necktie as well.

“I know it wasn’t an easy thing for Morgan to do, but I felt like if he had been a little more accountable then he would have had to…exercised the responsibility of dismissing me. We had finished strong. And the players wanted us to be there. We hoped we had done enough. But I knew it was close. We had a tough stretch there and didn’t come through at a critical time of the season and, obviously, had lost the support of administration.”

And the interest of the nation. Purdue football barely registered on the country’s radar.